book pickings

[bookpickings]

The Snail with the Right Heart

Maria Popova (author) & Pin Zhu (illustrator)

A love story, a science story, a story about the poetry of existence, about time and chance, genetics and gender, life and death, evolution and infinity, about not mistaking difference for defect, about recognizing diversity as nature’s wellspring of resilience and beauty.

[bookpickings]

Figuring

Maria Popova

Figuring explores the complexities of love and the human search for truth and meaning through the interconnected lives of several historical figures across four centuries—beginning with the astronomer Johannes Kepler, who discovered the laws of planetary motion, and ending with the marine biologist and author Rachel Carson, who catalyzed the environmental movement.

Stretching between these figures is a cast of artists, writers, and scientists—mostly women, mostly queer—whose public contribution have risen out of their unclassifiable and often heartbreaking private relationships to change the way we understand, experience, and appreciate the universe. Among them are the astronomer Maria Mitchell, who paved the way for women in science; the sculptor Harriet Hosmer, who did the same in art; the journalist and literary critic Margaret Fuller, who sparked the feminist movement; and the poet Emily Dickinson.

Emanating from these lives are larger questions about the measure of a good life and what it means to leave a lasting mark of betterment on an imperfect world: Are achievement and acclaim enough for happiness? Is genius? Is love? Weaving through the narrative is a set of peripheral figures—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Darwin, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Walt Whitman—and a tapestry of themes spanning music, feminism, the history of science, the rise and decline of religion, and how the intersection of astronomy, poetry, and Transcendentalist philosophy fomented the environmental movement.

Read the prelude at the link, or by clicking the cover.

[bookpickings]

A Velocity of Being: Letters to A Young Reader

Maria Popova, Claudia Bedrick

Thrilled to announce this labor of love 8 years in the making – a collection of original letters to children about why we read and how books shape our character by 121 of the most interesting people in our world, each illustrated by a great children’s book artist. Contributions by Jane Goodall, Yo-Yo Ma, Jacqueline Woodson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Mary Oliver, Neil Gaiman, Amanda Palmer, Rebecca Solnit, Elizabeth Gilbert, Shonda Rhimes, Richard Branson, Anne Lamott, David Byrne, Marina Abramović, Judy Blume, and other remarkable humans living inspired and inspiring lives. 100% of proceeds from the book benefit the public library system. Peek inside by clicking the cover.

[bookpickings]

The Human Use Of Human Beings: Cybernetics And Society (The Da Capo series in science)

Norbert Wiener

“We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves. A pattern is a message.”

From the father of cybernetics, a visionary 1950 classic that influenced generations of thinkers, creators, and entrepreneurs as wide-ranging as beloved author Kurt Vonnegut, anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, and virtual reality pioneer Jaron Lanier:

[bookpickings]

Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds (MIT Press)

Mary Shelley

“The labours of men of genius, however erroneously directed, scarcely ever fail in ultimately turning to the solid advantage of mankind.”

200 years of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a lens on science, society, and human responsibility:

[bookpickings]

Be Still, Life

Ohara Hale

A lovely songlike illustrated invitation to living with presence:

[bookpickings]

To the River: A Journey Beneath the Surface

Olivia Laing

“It’s a mercy that time runs in one direction only, that we see the past but darkly and the future not at all.”

Beautiful read on life, loss, and the meaning of riverS:

[bookpickings]

The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (Penguin American Library)

William James

“Our normal waking consciousness… is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different… No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded.”

William James on the 4 qualities of transcendent consciousness:

[bookpickings]

Walking in the City with Jane: A Story of Jane Jacobs

Susan Hughes

How a woman of great courage and great humanity changed the way we build cities, taught communities to stand up for themselves, and inspired generations to look up.

[bookpickings]

The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy

Michael McCarthy

“There can be occasions when we suddenly and involuntarily find ourselves loving the natural world with a startling intensity, in a burst of emotion which we may not fully understand, and the only word that seems to me to be appropriate for this feeling is joy.”

Beautiful read on nature and joy:

[bookpickings]

Egon Schiele: Poems and Letters 1910-1912

Elisabeth Leopold

“Envy those who see beauty in everything in the world.”

Egon Schiele on what it means to be an artist and why visionaries always come from the minority:

[bookpickings]

Selected Writings

Mirtha Dermisache

Argentinian artist Mirtha Dermisache's invented graphic languages – a poetic meditation on reality, representation, and our search for meaning:

[bookpickings]

The Complete Poetry

Maya Angelou

“We, this people, on this small and drifting planet Whose hands can strike with such abandon That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness That the haughty neck is happy to bow And the proud back is glad to bend Out of such chaos, of such contradiction We learn that we are neither devils nor divines.”

Astrophysicist Janna Levin reads Maya Angelou’s sublime cosmic clarion call to humanity, inspired by Carl Sagan:

[bookpickings]

Nature Writings

John Muir

“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.”

The great naturalist John Muir on the transcendent interconnectedness of nature:

[bookpickings]

Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited

Vladimir Nabokov

“The long A of the English alphabet… has for me the tint of weathered wood, but a French A evokes polished ebony.”

Nabokov’s synesthesia:

[bookpickings]

Feel Free: Essays

Zadie Smith

“Progress is never permanent, will always be threatened, must be redoubled, restated and reimagined if it is to survive.”

Zadie Smith on optimism and despair, superb read:

[bookpickings]

Human Values and Science, Art and Mathematics

Lillian Lieber

Mathematician Lillian Lieber, of whom Einstein was a fan, on how the greatest creative revolution in mathematics illuminates the core ideals of social justice and democracy: